Discussing The Cardano Bull and Bear Case

Key Insights

• Cardano is one of the world’s largest smart contract chains, with billions in market cap and millions of holders.
• Cardano has followed a path of developing its blockchain through rigorous peer-reviewed research and updates, unlike the “move fast and break things” style of many other Layer-1s.
• It took even longer to produce a viable smart contract platform than what most bulls would have assumed at the outset of the project, and the output of the research left much to be desired by the community and its critics.
• Issues with concurrency have so far limited DeFi on Cardano. Cardano’s future growth will hinge on solving these issues with the rollout of Layer-2 solutions and other scaling solutions. The Vasil Hardfork in June will be a key turning point.

Cardano is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain that currently ranks as the world’s fourth largest smart contract chain by market cap. Originally conceived by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson in 2015, Cardano launched its mainnet in late 2017. Today, its research and development are spearheaded by the Cardano Foundation. To fully implement the Cardano vision, the team has planned a five-phase rollout to bring about what it deems as the third generation of blockchains. Three of the five phases (Foundation, Decentralization, and Smart Contracts) have been completed, with the fourth phase (Scaling) due to roll out in the coming months. More background on Cardano’s history and technology can be found here.

Cardano is one of the oldest chains in the crypto space. It has over $20 billion in market capitalization, ranking in the top 10 in terms of overall value. It was created by one of the co-founders of Ethereum. It has a large passionate fanbase on YouTube (128,000 videos over 11,000 channels) and Twitter (850,000 followers). It even has partnerships with nation-states under its belt.